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It's Thursday, March 6th. Here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. It's just political theater until it becomes a law. Concerned Republicans deliver a message to Elon Musk, go easy with that chainsaw and send those cuts to Congress. Plus this. We'll be making major changes, so get used to it.

Doja's next target is Veterans Affairs. Tens of thousands of jobs on the chopping block. What it will mean for veterans and their families. Plus this. We might not see it maybe right away, but it's going to hurt down the line. If you're looking for a new car, you might want to buy now. President Trump is pressing pause on auto tariffs, but not for long. And later. I'm stepping aside as your governor. I announce my candidacy today for mayor of New York City.

From disgraced governor to candidate for mayor, in the post-MeToo era, are New Yorkers ready to forgive Andrew Cuomo? It is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. This is a live look at Sunrise New York City. Good morning, New York. Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. I'm going to turn to our first story, Elon Musk taking his Doge team and their plans directly to Republicans on Capitol Hill.

So as some GOP members are pushing for a seat at the table and determining what gets cut next, in his meeting behind closed doors with House and Senate Republicans, Musk gave them all his personal cell phone number. The idea is to more closely coordinate what's happening inside his team as it rapidly moves through the government.

There's a lot of opportunity to improve expenditures in the government, and we're making good progress in that regard. Does Congress have a vote on this? Well, they do have a vote on it. House Speaker Mike Johnson tells reporters he's now in almost daily communication with Musk about the efforts to cut government spending. But rank-and-file members left in the dark until now, and they want more clarity into how the cuts are being carried out.

The tone in the House was probably a lot different than the tone in the Senate. Most of the House members there were saying, yeah, we like what you're doing. Keep it up. Just keep us in the loop. Make sure that you don't step on any landmines. I'm not upset about disruption itself. Broken systems need disruption, but we need to make sure we get it right. If he just takes a half step.

Back, we'll do something that I think can be compassionate, at the same time, something that's impactful when it comes to saving America's money. But others in the House Republican ranks want Musk to keep his foot on the gas pedal.

You hear some Republicans say he's going too fast, slow down. What do you say to them? I've not had any Republican tell me that personally. Tell us that. Well, you know what I have to say to them is they need to grow a backbone. We're $36 trillion in debt, and this is how you save the country.

Joining me now to talk about all this, Stephen Collins and CNN politics senior reporter, Nia Malika Henderson, CNN senior political analyst and political and policy columnist at Bloomberg, and Margaret Tulliv, senior contributor at Axios. Okay, to the group chat.

I don't know if you've ever had to call IT, but that's not a phone number that necessarily yields a solution. Stephen, talk to me about the fact that these lawmakers are back, fresh off their town halls, and now they've got questions. Right, and they're hearing a lot of concern about various cuts from their constituents. This constitutionally is the way it should have happened before.

all along. We've seen the first signs that the Supreme Court is not that keen on the idea of Presidents just refusing to spend money that's already been appropriated by Congress. And why they're doing this is because if you use this process called rescission, which is to claw back money that's already been appropriated, that gets past the Senate filibuster. The problem here though is once you start introducing individual lawmakers to this process,

every lawmaker's got one program they don't want to get cut. Yeah, but that's the point of Congress, right? Like, one of the things I've wondered is, did they give away their power? Are they giving away their power? Yeah, I mean,

They already have. I mean, if you think about it, tens of thousands of these employees have already been let go. There is no undoing that at this point. Well, in some cases they have. They've been called back. That's right. When they let go of the folks, you know, in charge of sort of the nuclear football and in charge of... Which I'm pro that. I'm pro... Yeah, that's good.

that's good professionals working around nuclear mistakes were made um and so yeah they're obviously hearing from these constituents maybe they'll they'll try to slow this process down but already so many people have been let go um and it sounds like if if elon musk he wants to have control over this he sent that email about you know he said it was a proof of life it really was tell me what you did um

- Mark, what do you make of him walking the halls, giving out his number, trying to make nice? - 'Cause there's some problems. - Yeah. - But I think like,

- President Trump-- - Marjorie Taylor Greene says she hasn't heard anything. - Well, don't forget there's this push to take those Trump tax cuts and make them permanent. And if you're gonna talk about what drives deficits and debt over the long term, it is the imbalance with money coming in and money that needs to go out. And so some of this isn't like government spending, it is government revenue coming in. It's all part of the same conversation. There's just a couple like numbers or trends I keep

our eyes on the ball on and one of them are Elon Musk's favorability ratings 'cause when you look in the polling, voters, he is less popular even among-- - Yeah, though Kara Swisher said that he's been a heat shield for President Trump, like basically taking in-- - It's absolutely true, it's sort of plausible deniability. If it gets really bad, the president can just say, well, you know,

That's Elon Musk, but so far he stood by him, but if that's who you're sending out there and and these lawmakers are between a bit of a rock and a hard place in the GOP caucus because if they don't do what President Trump wants they face problems in the primaries, but if they don't stop

job cuts and economic problems down the chain in their districts, they could still be held accountable by voters. - And it's not clear that Donald Trump necessarily cares about that, right? If he goes two years and runs roughshod over Congress, when he gave his address to Congress, he basically said, "I'm here, I'm doing what I wanna do, I don't necessarily need you." - Steven, can you jump in on that? 'Cause usually you go to that address and make a bunch of requests. Please do this, please do that. He's doing so much on his own, there weren't that many

Right, and normally you see a president get on Air Force One and spend three days flying around the country promoting the policies he laid out in his address. He didn't really lay out any policies. His policy is wielding

vast presidential power and is not, to your point, very interested in Congress getting in the way of that. OK, group chat, stick around. We've got a lot more to talk about in terms of these cuts. But coming up on CNN this morning, the U.S. generally does not negotiate with terrorist organizations. So why is the U.S. breaking that longstanding tradition? Plus, a new critical fire threat. Where's the biggest danger today?

And defiant mayors face a grilling on Capitol Hill over sanctuary cities. We'll talk to a congressman who was in the room when this went down. When an illegal alien rapes a woman, do you believe you're on the right side of history? Yes or no? I will charge and prosecute them. Yes or no? No. Rape is obviously horrible. Why are you letting rapists back out onto the streets of Boston? That is not true. Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot, crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton?

And time just stands still. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy, this week on the podcast Terms of Service. These days, AI is widespread in the recruiting world. We see a lot of these AI hiring tools used on what the industry calls high turnover, high volume jobs. If you're applying for a job, what should you know about how this technology is evolving? Where can AI help in the hiring process? And where can it go wrong? Follow CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcasts.

It's 12 minutes past the hour. Want to give you your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to get your day going. The US and Hamas are holding direct talks about the release of hostages and extending the ceasefire with Israel. This actually upends a really long standing tradition in which the US government generally does not negotiate with terrorist organizations.

Last night, President Trump issued an ultimatum, writing, quote, "To the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits, but not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are dead." L.A. County is suing the utility company Southern California Edison over that Eaton fire, which killed 17 people. That was one of the major fires that scorched the L.A. area back in January. The county blames the utility equipment for starting the flames, but the company says there's no evidence of that.

And as Taylor Swift says, karma's gonna track you down step by step from town to town. And that is what has happened to two people accused of hacking into StubHub to steal 900 Taylor Swift tickets for her Erez tour. Prosecutors say the suspects sold those tickets and made, I can't believe I'm saying this, $635,000. The two were arrested on charges of grand larceny and computer tampering. And we want you to see this.

A police officer rescuing an unconscious man from a burning vehicle. This happened in Bridgewater, New Jersey after the car collided with a diesel tanker truck. Now both vehicles caught on fire. The driver of the car was taken to the hospital. His injuries are not life threatening.

And still coming up this morning, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo looking to make a political comeback. Why it looks like New Yorkers might be ready to give him a second chance. Plus, after announcing sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the Trump administration is giving one industry a short reprieve. And good morning, Norfolk, Virginia. It's expected to be in the 50s all day.

So our assignment this morning, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo officially pitching his political comeback to New Yorkers. And he's betting they're ready to forgive and forget. Cuomo announced he's running for mayor of New York City. He resigned in 2021 after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

But we're in the post-MeToo era now. So for this week's episode of my podcast, The Assignment, I spoke to the woman who started the MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, and asked her about Cuomo's potential return to office, what that says about not just Democrats, but society at large. I was literally about to go live and I never do that on Instagram the other night. I was like, this is the, and I hope this stays in because I need to say this.

We will never be able to move forward. And when I say move forward, I mean collectively towards liberation. This is not about women or men or even sexual violence. But the kind of world that so many of us say that we want to live in, we will not get there when we keep making these same kinds of mistakes, when we

to discount violence against women as a serious enough offense, right, that it always gets dismissed. So what happens is somebody like Andrew Cuomo decides he's going to run for mayor and people are like, oh, yeah, he's great. He knows how to govern. He can beat such and such and blah, blah, blah. And then somebody will say, but wait a minute, what about? And they're like, well, yeah, that was terrible or maybe that happened, but...

And that but is what's going to kill us. That but is what sets us back right there. You can't tell me that there are not other qualified people who don't have a history of abuse of power.

We're back with my group chat, Nia Malika Henderson, Margaret Tulliv, and also we're joined by Hannah Rosen, senior editor at The Atlantic. She's also the host of the Radio Atlantic podcast and co-host of the We Live Here Now podcast. You guys just heard what Tarana said. Nia, I'm going to start with you. Why not look for leaders without the baggage? Is it that it's no longer considered baggage? Yeah, listen, Amir, I mean,

New Yorkers will have a choice, right? It's not going to be just Cuomo who is running in this primary, but he is certainly going to be the most dominant force. If you look at polls, he's leading in the polls. There is a post-DEI era. There is a post-woke culture era. There is a post-MeToo era, a culture that you see happening. And we see this historically, right? There is social progress, and then there is backlash, and often the backlash

is much more impactful and bigger than whatever social progress. - Hannah, let me draw you in. You've also written in the past about men and our culture. I mean, we could say that fairly. - What about men, yeah. - What was the title of that book, Hannah Rosen? - It was called The End of Men. - Okay, I did not make that up.

- We are at the end. - At the end of men. - Yes, we are. So say more because I do feel like that's the kind of thing that is part of this backlash. - Yeah, I mean, the economic statistics have stayed the same. Men are still behind in college and all the things that were true

are still true when I wrote that book. However, the cultural feeling has completely shifted and they've somehow managed to turn powerlessness into extreme power. And I don't really know how that magic trick happened. Maybe it's backlash. Maybe it's a final push. I mean, it's so strong now. You had a White House official who was praising Andrew Tate, who's been accused of rape in two countries. That's

Right. Unusual. And as a victim of the- And self-described misogynist, we should mention as well. Margaret, one of the things I'm curious about is, is it no, are litmus tests over? One of the things we heard in the aftermath of the Kamala Harris loss was like, these progressives, they asked for too many things and they made things their rule and they shouldn't have done it. I feel like the Me Too thing was one of them. Defund police might've been the other. Can you put this in context for us?

In the Democratic Party, I don't think litmus tests are over. And in fact, I think what the litmus test should be, it seems to still be being litigated inside the Democratic caucus or the Democratic Party as they kind of search for their next leaders and how they want to position themselves. But I think there is obviously a change. And I think if you're Andrew Cuomo, he's not running for mayor of New York to end the Me Too movement. He is running for mayor of New York to

to exercise a political comeback and he is, whatever you may think about him for better or for worse, clearly has political skills. He's reading the room or the country as it were and thinking. Let me just, well, I'm glad you said this because I want to play a clip of him actually in his 17 minute online announcement that he made where he kind of referred to this. Did I always do everything right in my years of government service? Of course not.

Would I do some things differently knowing what I know now? Certainly. Did I make mistakes? Some painfully? Definitely. And I believe I learned from them and that I am a better person for it. And I hope to show you that every day. Okay, Margaret, I want you to finish your thought. I didn't mean to interrupt. I felt like we needed the context. Were the mics hot when we were all laughing as that was running for me? Thanks for being here.

Because that's like an SNL skit that is going to be made in the next show. So I think those are the things that you have to say if you mount a political comeback. Unless you're Donald Trump, but go ahead. Yes, okay, but fair. But I also think there are tactical things about this race that need to be considered. And one is that if it was Andrew Cuomo against one very strong alternative candidate, you

it would be a different landscape. - But he sees an opening because he's not canceled, which is what we were told during the Me Too movement was happening. Men were being hounded out of the public space never to return. That's not turned out to be the case. - Oh no, I mean, a few men went to prison. A tiny handful of men went to prison.

Some did kind of disappear and many came back even when they had 20 charges of sexual harassment against them. I'm thinking of the Cleveland Browns quarterback, for example. So it had varied effects, but I think reading the room is exactly what's happening now. It's just not a disqualifier, which is a very, very different moment than we were in in 2017. And listen, I think these politicians look at Donald Trump, right, coming back from

obviously accusations and all sorts of infractions. Which in a way kind of kicked it all off because we're talking 2016, 2017 as the reporting of Harvey Weinstein came out. And if you look at Andrew Cuomo, you talk about his ambition. This is a stepping stone

to something much bigger, right? He sees himself not just as the mayor, not just as a former governor, but as president. And if you think about the conversations that are going on in the Democratic Party, they see white men as the path forward and possibly- Moderate white men who can talk about law and order. Moderate white men kind of-

manly white men as well. And I think if you look at Andrew Cuomo, that is the part that he's playing. Okay, manly men. Manly men, I was just going to say. I feel like you're going to have fun. I want you guys to respond to this. So somebody, it's a right-wing radio commentator who was very popular, said to me, the problem with Democrats is they don't have any manly enough candidates, that their Democrats are not manly enough. And that's why they can't win elections. What do you guys think about that?

Well, listen, I mean, I think that's partly what Andrew Cuomo was doing. If you think about what was going on with Biden, some of that he was old, he was weak, he wasn't manly enough. He wasn't he didn't project strength in the way that Donald Trump was able to say those are in our minds. Now, those things are equal. Exactly right. That's the only way there is a.

There is a comeback movement for masculinity. The question is can you be masculine and embrace your masculinity and also be a decent person at the same time? What are the boundaries for that? And is masculinity or femininity going to be the guiding issue for voters at the polls at a time when they're concerned about all these other things? There are going to be a lot of women voters who want, if they're going to vote for a man, they want a man who

will take care of women and represent women well as well as represent men well. Or at least that was-- Or maybe they're trad wise. Well, but at least that was the messaging out of this election. There was so much conversation about the gender divide in voting. I'm sure we're going to keep talking about this. Thank you guys for a spirited chat. You can hear more of the conversation actually if you want to know more from Me Too founder Tarana Burke. My podcast, The Assignment, comes out every Thursday. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

And I also want you to check out Hannah Rosen's podcast. It's called We Live Here Now. You can find that on Apple, Spotify, everywhere. Hannah Rosen's, of course, senior editor at The Atlantic. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you. And straight ahead on CNN this morning, the Doge Chainsaw targeting the VA.

How will veteran services be impacted as the administration plans to cut tens of thousands of employees? Plus, fire and ice. Millions faced blizzard conditions this week, but others face the threat of fire today. The new season of United States of Scandal has bribery, fraud, undercover agents, and politicians suffering from a moral virus. You know, the usual. United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper, premieres Sunday at 9 on CNN.

And I want to thank all our European leaders, first of all, and for such signal, strong support. This comes on strong support from the very beginning of the war and what's been during all this period and last week, you stay with us.

That's Ukraine's President Zelenskyy just moments ago thanking Europe amid a very public spat with President Trump. Good morning, everyone. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me here on CNN this morning. Here's what's happening right now. So as we mentioned, European leaders and Ukraine's president, they're actually at a gathering at this hour in Brussels for a special summit about Russia's war on Ukraine. And it comes as they face a new reality, a Trump administration that seems to have shifted the tone toward Moscow.

As soon as today, President Trump could issue an executive order to close the Department of Education, that according to the Wall Street Journal. On Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon vowed to eliminate what she called bureaucratic bloat, describing it as the department's quote, final mission.

Republicans in Congress say they want Elon Musk to keep them in the loop when it comes to cutting jobs and spending in the federal government. Lawmakers say he tried to distance himself from the mass firings when they met on Capitol Hill, instead blaming department heads for the choices. Deep cuts are coming to the Department of Veterans Affairs in that effort. The Trump administration is set to let go about 15% of the workforce or more than 70%

1,000 jobs, 70 to the VA. That's according to an internal memo. President Trump's allies insisting veterans will not suffer. Every time I go back to my district, veterans are coming and talking to me about all the problems they have with the VA. So with or without those employees, they're not making a difference for veterans. I think they can do better.

So we want to put this in context for you. Is the VA actually on the path to privatization? Stephen Collinson and Nia Malika Henderson are back. We're also joined by Naveed Shah, an Iraq war veteran and political director of the veterans group Common Defense. So, Naveed, I want to start with you because it was a bit of a plot twist, I think, for the administration to learn 30 percent of the workforce

of the federal workforce they were cutting were veterans. But as you see this moving towards the VA itself, do you see it as part of the privatization movement? Absolutely. It definitely seems like what they intend to do is cut the VA bit by bit. And this has been an ongoing problem with different pieces of legislation that the Republican

have passed, like the Mission Act and the Community Cares Act. They've been sniping at the VA, cutting it bit by bit, and now it seems like they're trying to take a big chunk out of it. But they don't call it sniping, right? They're saying make it more efficient, or I think Pete Hegseth said something like let the dollars follow the veterans. They take the money and go where they need to go. What's wrong with that?

- The number one thing is that every veteran that we've talked to, every one of the common defenses members says the quality of care that they receive at the VA, they rank it in the 90th percentile. It's the best care that they receive in the entire country. - It's getting the care that's the problem, 'cause we hear those complaints as well. - There's been challenges that the VA has faced with wait times and staffing shortages.

But those issues will not be addressed by cutting 83,000 jobs. Those issues will be addressed by hiring the right workers for the right jobs to make sure. For example, for every five nurses that the VA loses, that's another operating room that closes.

You know there is something or willing about the folks who are cutting these workers. Them saying this will make it more efficient right going in. It isn't efficient in terms of some of the wait times and there have been obviously scandals involving involving the V as well over the last year. So cutting just seems like a bad idea and we'll see. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she's already getting complaints from veterans. I can't imagine that those will stop with these cuts. Yeah, and.

You hear a lot of these glib comments about how the VA can be more efficient. You hear that from all sorts of politicians. It's not just this administration, we've heard it from previous ones. But there's two things here. First of all, there are hundreds of thousands of young veterans like yourself who took part over 15 years in wars abroad. The country obviously owes them a great debt. When you start

working with the VA and cutting programs, you're also taking on a real big political risk. And to your point, we've seen when people learn that a lot of the federal workers who are being laid off

veterans who make up a great percentage of the federal workforce. That becomes a real political problem for the administration. Some of the problems now are piling up regarding this Doge stuff. - Right, as they speak out, I want to play for you guys some actual Veterans Affairs workers who were speaking out.

It's going to cause a lot of delays. And now, especially now with the cuts that have been made, we're going to see more delays on the phones, emails, processing of claims. I hope that we all, each and every one of us, including our leadership, would be a little more careful about the departments that they cut from and the positions that they're cutting in the support, especially in regards to the veterans.

In a way, Stephen's talking about Univied, right? And I think of that, too, as the Republican Party being particularly pain-sensitive to veterans' concerns. However, there's also a huge number of veteran support for Trump himself. So is that causing divisions within the community the way we saw it, say, with unions? You know, it's actually causing this situation right now is bringing veterans together. Because even vets who voted for Trump are saying, this is not what I voted for.

I'll give you a personal example. My boss, Jose Vasquez, the executive director of Common Defense, just a couple weeks ago went into the VA in New York because he had a stomach ache. They were able to quickly get him into a scan, quickly get him to a biopsy. He had surgery yesterday to remove a mass on his pancreas. And they were able to detect that, get him quickly through the medical process. And because the VA in New York is luckily well-staffed and well-equipped, he was able to get that checked out before it became a problem.

But every story like that, there's another story where someone's going to come out and say, I waited for months. I couldn't get support for X and Y. And I'm just wondering sort of how you think this plays out with the public. Have they finally found a federal agency that the public...

actually sympathizes with? - It could be. I mean, Republicans have been expert at sort of painting all federal workers as sort of lazy, nameless, faceless, a drag on the economy and the federal government. But it could be that if you have these stories of

our best and our brightest being a delayed care, denied care because of these cuts, it could turn things around in terms of these cuts and they wanna reinstate. - Stephen, I wanna ask you one question very quickly. I think there are some on the right who have said, we're not privatizing the VA, stop talking about this, this is a boogeyman, but tell me what you're seeing from the administration or past comments from people who are in the administration now. Is this part of a long running movement?

I think there's certainly evidence to the fact that there are people in the administration that want to move down this path. It would have to get past the president, and he's, I think, somewhat sensitive to political pressures. There are not many occasions in the first term and so far in this term where the president has taken a step that goes against his own political interests. Now, he doesn't have to run for re-election. The equation might be slightly different here.

But what we're seeing, I think, with this whole Doge situation is government isn't just Washington. It has a place in everybody's lives and the people are starting to realise that.

All right, Navit Jha, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. Group chat, stay with me because still ahead on CNN this morning, mayors from some of the country's biggest cities, they're taking heat on Capitol Hill. We're joined by Congressman Suhas Abramanyam and we'll also have this take on how the contentious hearing unfolded.

Oh, and why Broadway's biggest musical won't be at the Kennedy Center later this month. My guests are here in the room to talk about the room where it's not happening. That's next. I will enter into the record. This is my right. Thank you. No, no.

Just a small glimpse of what happened in a heated hearing about so-called sanctuary cities before the House Oversight Committee. There were the mayors of New York, Chicago, Boston and Denver. They faced a barrage of questions from Republican lawmakers accusing them of harboring undocumented migrants.

Mayors Wu, Johnson, Johnston and Adams will be publicly accountable for their failure to follow the law and protect the American people. Mayor Wu, yes or no? No. Rapist, obviously horrible. Why are you letting rapists back out on the streets of Boston? That is not true. That is not what's happening in Boston. Based on your responses, I'm all going to be criminally referring you to the Department of Justice for investigation.

The roles were reversed for one mayor, New York's Eric Adams, facing tough questions from Democrats over the federal charges of the Trump administration is now looking to dismiss. I'm going to ask you one more time. Have you ever talked about this case with anyone in the Trump administration? This case is from Judge Ho and at a deference to Judge Ho, Judge Ho is going to decide the outcome of this case. I think Mayor Adams is not answering the question because he probably has.

Joining me now to talk about this, the congressman that you just saw there, Suha Subramaniam, Democrat from Virginia. Congressman, thank you for being here. Thank you. We can get to Eric Adams in a moment, but I saw a sort of divide there. Democrats saying you're going into schools, you're going to be taking kids out of the classrooms. Republicans saying you've let gang members hang out in your jails for a hot minute without cooperating with ICE. It's like painting two very different visions.

What can Democrats do for their vision, I think, to maybe resonate more? - I thought the mayors did great. I mean, they talked about how crime has actually gone down even with an influx of undocumented immigrants, how many of the immigrants coming into their communities actually commit crime at a much lower rate than the average American.

And just generally, they talked about what they're doing to try to handle the influx of immigrants. I thought they did great, honestly. But does that worry you? I mean, when I think about the Biden administration, Harris administration, this was often a talking point with Democrats. Things are not as bad as you're saying. That did not resonate with voters.

Yeah, well, all they had was facts, right? And the facts spoke for themselves. They talked about how they were able to get folks housing, they were able to get folks jobs, and they were able to run through what was going on and do a good job of it. And so we had facts as well. We talked about how the bill that they're trying to put forward, basically defunding any city from any federal funding if they...

welcome immigrants. You know, that's really bad for a lot of these cities' public safety. They're actually going to make crime worse, not better, by doing that. I want to ask you one more thing. Mayor Johnson was asked about cooperating with ICE after the hearing last night on CNN. Here's what he had to say.

We do follow federal law. We right now are cooperating on the detention and pursuit of violent criminals all the time. I think what we're not doing is we're not going to do ICE's job for them. We're not going to use our Denver police officers to chase down grandmothers out of church pews that have been in the city for 20 years. It's interesting hearing this rhetoric in the years since the Democratic Party had people talking about abolishing ICE.

Do you think there is some rhetoric, there was some conversation in the past that is coming home to roost now?

Well, he was just again, this is all about public safety for these cities and these mayors. They're talking about how they do work with ICE when there's a violent criminal who is undocumented. You know, ICE picks them up at the prison, right? They do handle these situations. They handle them quite well, actually. And with public safety in mind, this is more than just talking points to us. We actually care about public safety. Republicans are all talk. We're actually walking the walk and doing the work.

You know, all of these conversations kind of keep coming back to the same thing. What are Democrats doing? I watched a clip of a town hall for you where you were saying to voters, look, come to town halls, have the conversation. At the same time, in the moments where Democrats try and step up, people are saying it's wanting. Here's Senator Fetterman from Pennsylvania kind of criticizing Democratic protests.

Oh, let's see. Hold on one second because this is actually a very good quote. A sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance. It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained. Yeah, you know, not all Democrats have the same view, right?

what Al Green might think is different from what Fetterman might think, right? Everyone's handling it the way that they can. What's best for their district, what's best for their conscience. - But doesn't everyone need to handle it collectively together in one direction? I mean, is that the struggle here? - Well, we do have one voice. It's to talk about all the things that this administration is doing to raise costs, because pretty much everything they've done has actually raised costs. When they just ran a campaign talking about lowering costs all last year,

And that's just one example. I mean, Eric Adams, for instance, coming to our committee and not answering my questions. I mean, they're tacitly not tacitly. They're they're endorsing corruption. Right. He pardoned Blagojevich as well. If you're a corrupt politician, if you're a dictator, this administration is embracing you and pardoning you right now.

So we have a pretty easy and pretty, I mean, the talking points write themselves, right? We haven't even talked about Medicaid yet. There's so much that the Republicans are doing that are going to hurt American people. And so on that front, you know, all Democrats are actually pretty in line with pushing back on that. How they push back, you know, is different from community to community. But, you know, I like town halls. I think that's the best place to push back, telling the stories of people. And I think, you know, others might have a different way of doing it. Yeah.

Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time to come in and talk to us here on CNN this morning. Appreciate you. It's now 51 minutes past the hour. Want to give you your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. There's dry air, gusty winds causing fire threats from western Texas to southern Colorado. It's happening this morning. The worst is expected across western Texas.

to central and eastern New Mexico, where there's a critical fire weather alert. The winds were so strong the U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance blimp became untethered and was found nearly 600 miles away. Popped. On this planet, I've never seen any kind of balloon that big. That balloon was huge, like huge, mongoose.

Meanwhile, parts of the Midwest digging out after being hit with blizzard-like conditions. Police arrested at least nine people during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at New York's Barnard College. This happened after a bomb threat.

So officers ordered everyone to evacuate. Later, they determined that the threat was a hoax. The protesters had been staging a sit-in when this occurred. And the Nova C lunar lander is expected to touch down on the moon's south pole in just over five hours. It's part of NASA's plan to establish a long-term presence there. Included in this mission, a cellular network to help future astronauts communicate and a drone that can hop across the moon's surface.

and the Kennedy Center is throwing away its shot to host a Broadway hit. The musical Hamilton was set to run at the DC venue, but the show's producer is teaching them how to say goodbye, canceling the shows in protest of President Trump's firing members of the center's board and naming himself chairman. I feel like this was a Saturday Night Live

Actually, the Hamilton, no, okay, I'm the only one on Hamilton Watch. Also, President Trump tapping the brakes on auto tariffs for 30 days. In a speech before Congress this week, the president insisted U.S. automakers were excited about his 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada. The thing is, panicked might be more accurate. And despite a couple of stock market plunges, the administration remains all in on tariffs.

There's going to be a short period of time where there'll be some higher prices on certain products. It's not inflation, that's nonsense. Higher prices, but it's not inflation. Many auto industry workers we spoke to in Michigan are not buying that spin from the Commerce Secretary. I think theirs will hurt. You think they're gonna hurt? Yeah, I do. I personally do.

Because if it's too high, they're not going to want to deal with us, right? We might not see it maybe right away, but it's going to hurt down the line.

Okay, so that's the word from workers. Union leaders? Well, they seem to be on a different page. In a statement, United Auto Workers praised President Trump's tariffs, saying they are, quote, a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals, end quote. Stephen, Nia Malika, Margaret, you're back. Can I just touch on that quote for a second? Because I feel like it was just a few months ago that the UAW was not

into Trump policies? Am I misreading it? - No, I don't think so. I think there is some division there. The question here though is between short term and long term.

The point of the tariffs, if there is one in the administration, is to bring manufacturing back to the United States instead of building cars half in Mexico, half in Canada, etc. The problem is that is a long-term project. There's going to be a lot of short-term pain. And when you hear the Commerce Secretary, for example, talk about prices and inflation, it does remind me a little bit of the

early years of the Biden administration when they were telling everybody that inflation was transitory, even when everyone was feeling the prices going up. And when a government tells people something that they're seeing with their own eyes is not happening, that's a problem. Yeah. I mean, they're actually telling people just to accept the pain.

right that there's going to be some disruption there's going to be some pain and it's all but negotiating that's probably the number one talking point i hear yeah and it's about fentanyl i mean there are all sorts of excuses and context they're giving for this but in the meantime you're going to be paying possibly higher prices for cars and guacamole and all not just

line workers and union leaders. It is the automakers themselves telling the president himself, "Hey, this is a really big problem." And explaining a little bit about the way the process works, which is that North American production is different than

importing automobiles from Europe or, you know, from Japan. And that, remember, this isn't Donald Trump's first rodeo. This is President Trump's second term. In the first term, they came up with pacts and agreements on which these automakers based all of their plans. And remember the auto industry, like they got bailouts under Obama, right, when the market crashed. And they're a powerful constituency in of themselves.

And they're a driver of employment in key swing states. There are political ramifications for this, there are economic ramifications for this, and it's not as simple as saying not enough of this car was made in America when American automakers have, with the government,

many administrations support and policies created systems where components are made in North America for American-made cars than American-made workers. There are a ton of questions here. What's going to happen to BMW workers in South Carolina?

what's going to happen to American employees. - Right, as they spread across to right to work states and things like that. Don't look at my 401k 'cause it's not impressive. So this is gonna be a question about markets, Stephen, because you actually were writing about this. Markets don't like uncertainty.

Right. What does that mean? Your word you used there was planning. And it's very important, not just for big car firms, but for small businesses. They have certainty of costs going forward. When that doesn't happen, the market senses that there's uncertainty. Markets hate uncertainty. So that's what we're seeing. And this the problem here is

There are early signs in the economy of softening. Consumers are already spending less. There's less consumer confidence. Yeah, the consumer confidence index is down. So you had in one of the earlier segments, you were saying if you want to buy a car, you should buy it now. Or later, or...

- But this is the problem, because the consumer doesn't know, right? And then the natural reaction is to stop spending money and that fuels a cycle that can be threatening to an economy that's already looking a little vulnerable. - Yeah, and voters thought that Donald Trump was going to fix this, right? - When he said day one. - Day one, it was gonna be fixed, egg prices, you're gonna be able to get a dozen for $2 or whatever. And none of that has happened, and you see some of the polling reflecting that Americans think he's not spending enough time

with the economy and dealing with that. Even in his speech, he barely talked about the economy. It was mostly about culture wars. So there is going to possibly a price to pay for this president going forward with all of this uncertainty and prices still remaining fairly high in the grocery stores. Yeah, Margaret, I want to give the last word to you. What should we be paying attention to going forward in this conversation about tariffs?

Mexico's next move is going to be really important. They made a number of steps and concessions that they thought... A new president who has to show she is up to the task. Guess what? Presidents in other countries and prime ministers also have their own domestic politics to deal with. Mexico's next steps could be tremendously important here because...

Here's the other thing. If you crush economies in Mexico in particular, you could get more pressure for more immigration to your border, which is exactly what you're trying to prevent. All of this stuff is intertwined. The president and his team know that. But they're going to have to deal with the ramifications of it and the strategic –

Moves how one of their policies impacts another policy in real time Margaret Tala of Nia Malika Henderson Steven Collinson who I love to read online columnist at CNN I want to thank you guys for being here having a group chat with me. I also want to thank you for Waking up with us. I'm Audie Cornish and CNN News Central begins right now